Google Apps Marketplace launches, Foursquare steps it up a notch, Which smartphone will end up on top?
March 11, 2010 | Thursday at Three
Tuesday night was Google’s big night! They launched their Google Apps Marketplace, which supply’s third-party cloud applications a chance to join forces with Google apps. This will allow the 25 million users access to a wide range of applications. The Google Apps Marketplace will work in much of the same way as the Apple App Store does. The easy-to-use 4-click process will enable businesses to purchase apps like Intuit Online Payroll and OfficeSynch. All of the apps will be beneficial to businesses as well as individuals and offer perks such as, single sign-on and centralized administration.
Foursquare takes their location-based service to a whole new level just in time for the launch of the Foursquare iPhone app. Foursquare enables people to create statuses of “check-in” points of where they have recently been and it allows users to comment and rank the venues. The newest addition of Foursquare now allows users to not only tell people where they have been but who they have been there with. However, Foursquare will not show all users who were at a specific venue at a certain time, but it does show what friends you have been there with. This new technology will create a more accurate time-line of where you have been and with who. I still find it unclear if this new addition will be a huge success, or will the privacy issues cause it to back-fire in their face?
According to recent research at comScore, Android is quickly gaining popularity in the smartphone market. Stats showed that Android gained 4.3 points, which brings it up to 7.1 percent of people using this new technology. An unhappy Apple remained at a 25.2 percent and Blackberry continued to rise to a 43 percent. Even with all the drama happening between the smartphones, sales continue to rise. Recently, Blackberry users encountered some problems when trying to access their email from their smartphones. According to users, certain data services were unavailable for up to two days this past week. T-mobile did make a statement on Twitter encouraging people to restart their Blackberries in hopes that it would solve the problem. In other news, Apple has brought up a lawsuit regarding patent infringement against HTC, the makers of Android. So, between all the smartphone drama it is still unclear of who will emerge victorious.